Michel Foucault

Andrew Thacker (The Nottingham Trent University)
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Michel Foucault is primarily a cultural theorist whose impact has been immense across many disciplines within the social sciences and humanities. Madness, sexuality, the history of medicine, the nature of authorship, literature and transgression, the practice of historiography, the development of the penitentiary, the nature of power and discourse in modern societies: these are just some of the manifold topics on which Foucault wrote with vision and insight. Foucault is often associated with other French thinkers such as Jacques Derrida or Jacques Lacan as a founder of post-structuralism although, arguably, Foucault's work has been the more influential across a wider range of subjects, such as cultural studies, feminism, political …

3873 words

Citation: Thacker, Andrew. "Michel Foucault". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 March 2003 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1599, accessed 23 November 2024.]

1599 Michel Foucault 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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